Kingdom Hearts...(angry rant, please tell me why you like this game)
This is a rant, and probably will end up being a lengthy rant. If you don't want to read it, please stop now. You've been warned.
OK. So I shelled out the $40 to get KH 1.5 HD Remix. $40 is nothing for a "new" game, and it came with a sweet limited edition art book. I remember buying KH when it first came out because of how much everyone hyped it. It was when I was fairly young. I remember playing it for a few hours and just not being very impressed with it. I believe I only ever got to the first town and had quit. I gave the game the benefit of the doubt because I was a kid at the time, not really into more "mature" games/RPGs. Everyone hypes this game so hard, and goes on and on about how great it is.
So I was kinda excited to sit down and play it...I love my trophies (as I'm sure you can see) so the extra reward of that was promising. I pop in the game and sit down...I play for a bit. The first thing I'm presented with is a collection quest. There is no map, no compass, no indicators on the screen. There is no questlog I can find to bring up and remind me what I need, nor is there a way for me to see what I have checked off thus far. I keep returning to the quest giver to ask where the **** I'm supposed to go.
I finally grab all the different junk I need to make this raft, and the game makes me do an awful platforming race. Now, I LOVE platforming games, but the mechanics in this are just ****ed. I fell down and lost before I even knew which direction I was supposed to run.
Twelve hours later after doing some leveling up, I'm finally presented with some battles. The camera is completely ******ed. Like, I play inverted, but I have no idea wtf is going on with the camera controls. I have it set to auto, and yet its so god awfully slow that I can't wait for it, so I end up mashing the right stick hoping that I might be pushing it in the correct direction. Things keep spawning, constantly. Non stop. Worse than Pokemon random encounters. I enjoy fighting things as much as the next guy, but the endless spawn results in me eventually just running around frantically trying my best to remember where it is I'm going.
17 hours later I finally find a save location...which blows my mind. How can they have remade this game and not implemented some kind of autosave? I understand back in the PS2 days, it was somewhat excusable. But now, when they made all the effort to remix the game for the PS3 and they didn't fix one of the most annoying features ever to exist in a game. I find myself running around through a town, in and out of buildings waiting for something (anything) to happen. I keep checking every corner thinking I missed something...wouldn't ya know, I had to re-enter a building I had already gone into...the only way I figured this out was because the ****ing save location was in there.
So now I'm finally in Wonderland or whatever, and I feel like I'm sorta comfortable with the mechanics of the game...and some simple puzzle confronts me, I do it and remain completely lost. I have to keep checking an online guide about what direction I'm supposed to go. And I can't stop and look around, I'm constantly being chased by (ever increasingly difficult) constant spawning enemies. Donald keeps dying and laying down, and I don't even know where the **** Goofy is. Meanwhile, Tony Soprano is in a coma, and I'm trying to fight my way around a map and angle the camera hoping to god I find the next location to run to.
I've heard the story is "excellent", but it seems patronizing and cliche at best. Its like an angsty teenager huffed too much gas and got some of his moms mascara in his eyes while watching a Disney movie and beating off to some Final Fantasy porn, and proceeded to make a game about it. Aww shit, the "dark shadows" are coming. Edgy! I realize I'm only about 20% into the game at this point, but I'm having a hard time believing any story can redeem the awful gameplay. I don't understand how there so much hype and excitement surrounding this game. I'm still going to do my very best to finish it (probably with a constant need for a walkthrough) but this shit is like pulling teeth. Chilling with Dolan and Gooby :dub: isn't even close to being worth the shitty job they did designing this game.
I really hope I'm wrong. I really hope I can finish this game and come back here and say "Wow Oister, you were an asshole. If you had just played another few hours you would have gotten past all these awful opinions and had an excellent time! Money started raining from the sky, and you'll live forever probably! Kingdom Hearts is the best thing that ever happened to anyone, and I understand all these legions upon legions of people who constantly circle jerk in its wake!"...but I don't currently feel like thats possible.
